Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vienna again named world's most liveable city

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 119 posts

Re: Vienna again named world's most liveable city

#31

Post by raverbashing »

adrianh wrote: post #2

I've actually been thinking of moving to Vienna. Anybody in Vienna have a moment to type out some thoughts on what it's like to live there?

Granted, I visited for a couple of days, but I was positively and deeply surprised by it.

Everything seems nice. The city is Beautiful. Public trams go everywhere and the transport system is top notch.

Cons: they speak "Bavarian German" and they seem to be paranoid about the internet (more than in Germany). They have cold winters as well if I'm not mistaken.

Re: Vienna again named world's most liveable city

#32

Post by Pxtl »

debt wrote: post #19
freehunter wrote: post #14

On these "most livable" city indexes, I wish they would take into account how much it costs to live there compared to wages. San Fransisco is high on their list, but from what I'm hearing, it's really not the panacea that these lists often make it out to be. High wages, but higher cost of living and horrible living conditions compared to the Midwest, for example. I have a friend who just bought a two-story, four bedr…

Living conditions? The midwest has been and is still being hit with one of the worst winters in a few decades. Also I hear that "land is cheap elsewhere" argument all the time. You're right; if I was 82 and wanted to settle down I'd buy a ranch somewhere in the palm desert for 100k, but I'm not. I'm young and I want to work. I'll live in my shitty apartment in SF long before I whither away on some plot of land in the…

> You're right; if I was 82 and wanted to settle down I'd buy a ranch somewhere in the palm desert for 100k, but I'm not.

I'm not even sure why 82-year-olds do this. It's pretty much guaranteed you'll lose your ability to drive before you lose your ability to keep a home. Why set yourself up for the heartache of finding out you can no longer live in the house you just bought because it's inaccessible by anything but your private car you can no longer use?

Re: Vienna again named world's most liveable city

#33

Post by skywhopper »

bane wrote: post #18

The more I travel, the more convinced I am that the American experiment with car oriented cities was a disaster that will take untold billions of dollars to rectify. It's affected everything from public safety (e.g. police can no longer walk a patrol), to loss of community (people don't really shop in the same place they live), lost productivity (stuck in traffic), and on and on and on. I'm very encouraged by recent,…

Don't forget about how it develops isolated and street-naive teenagers in the suburbs who are completely unable to go anywhere interesting without a parent till they're 16 (or older in many jurisdictions where the driving age has been creeping up and rules disallow teenagers from giving each other rides). Remember the woman who let her 10 year old take a city bus to school and back in NYC (something which most any 10 year old can master after one ride) and got accosted on network TV for her carelessness?

Re: Vienna again named world's most liveable city

#34

Post by mesaaz »

bane wrote: post #28
mesaaz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writer James Howard Kunstler believes that the American choice of suburban-oriented development was the "greatest misallocation of resources" in history. His TED talk on the topic is worth watching. http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...

"...that we threw in the garbage after WW2..." I think this is a very salient point. I'm glad to see him focus on terrible urban design as well. Pre-WW2 public spaces and areas are beautiful wonderful places that people spend significant fractions of their yearly income and travel across the planet just to spend a few days in. The world really would be a better place if we followed what he's advocating here. I'm so h…

Another good source on human-scale urban design is Nathan K. Lewis. He has a great set of postings on traditional cities. An interesting point is the surprising commonality of organic urban building throughout the world, with the exception of the US.

His recipe is mass-transit, "really narrow streets," and mixed-zoning.

http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/tradcityarchive.ht...

Re: Vienna again named world's most liveable city

#38

Post by [deleted] »

bane wrote: post #18

The more I travel, the more convinced I am that the American experiment with car oriented cities was a disaster that will take untold billions of dollars to rectify. It's affected everything from public safety (e.g. police can no longer walk a patrol), to loss of community (people don't really shop in the same place they live), lost productivity (stuck in traffic), and on and on and on. I'm very encouraged by recent,…

[deleted]

Re: Vienna again named world's most liveable city

#39

Post by matlock »

raverbashing wrote: post #31
adrianh wrote: post #2

I've actually been thinking of moving to Vienna. Anybody in Vienna have a moment to type out some thoughts on what it's like to live there?

Granted, I visited for a couple of days, but I was positively and deeply surprised by it. Everything seems nice. The city is Beautiful. Public trams go everywhere and the transport system is top notch. Cons: they speak "Bavarian German" and they seem to be paranoid about the internet (more than in Germany). They have cold winters as well if I'm not mistaken.

>Bavarian German

you wouldn't want to say that in Vienna though :). We are pretty proud of our Austrian German. Winters are cold, and summers are hot, but still fine. Really nice to live here though.

Re: Vienna again named world's most liveable city

#40

Post by matlock »

hoggle wrote: post #21
4ad wrote: post #11

I live in Vienna and I see these surveys all the time. I moved in Vienna 2.5 years ago. Vienna is a good place to live (otherwise I would have left) provided you don't care about things that are simply not available, for example no real IT sector, no startup scene etc. It's okay, but it's nothing spectacular. I don't understand what these people find so fascinating about the city. My friends share my opinion too. I g…

Raunzt scho wie a echter Wiener! :)

Niiiiiiiice. Da ist der Wiener Humor ja auch noch in den Kommentaren. :)
Post reply on HN